Crazy Jungle Owl

Ronde

The Boucheron “Ronde” collection, which was launched in 2005, quickly became a classic – its assets are a perfect reflection of the House’s essential values. This year, in order to extend its selection of retro-chic watches, it is simultaneously introducing a chronograph and an automatic, two quintessentially timeless pieces designed to appeal to enlightened amateurs eager to find an expression of the House’s best in the classic yet intense lines of an ancient watch-making heritage.
In addition, Boucheron is further enriching its curiosity cabinet with the stunning Bestiaire Seconde Folle Ronde collection.

Bestiary Ronde Seconde Folle

Driven by dogged determination and irrepressible passion, the House of Boucheron is further enriching its cabinet of curiosities with this year’s Bestiaire Seconde Folle collection. Tongue in cheek and iconoclastic, the little beasts who live on the dial of these new self-winding mechanical watches once again strike a pose, this time with the particularity that each has an element that twirls in time. The purpose of this new production is to breathe life into animals, and a new dimension into time.
With boundless creativity, the House of Boucheron set upon a mission to make the best of watch-making complications and channel their potential by diverting them from their original function, but without ever letting them lose touch with their raison d’être – namely, to give the time, in one way or the other. With three of its favourite animals - the frog, the chameleon and the owl - Place Vendôme’s very first Jeweller (1893) and fine watchmaking “hobbyist” – has decided to give a humorous twist in the display of the little seconds hand. Rather than the austerity generally associated with this type of creation - requiring hundreds of working hours and the talent of several master watchmakers - Boucheron, in collaboration with the Girard-Perregaux manufacture, has developed a new self-winding mechanical movement based on the existing GP 4000 calibre.
This new heart, produced exclusively for Boucheron by the Girard-Perregaux manufacture, was named GP 4000 “Seconde Folle” (“Crazy Second”), because its basic mechanism, already well-known by fine horology connoisseurs, is complemented with a module allowing the seconds hand, initially central, to be offset at 7 o’clock on the dial. Moreover, the usual hand is replaced by a very fine and lightweight disk
which rotates fully in one minute. As one would suspect, this highly original development instantly triggered creative imagination among the Parisian House’s designers. They were given carte blanche to use the device with maximum fantasy, in order to develop audacious timepieces: the least you can say about them is that they seem to have made the mischievous little beasts on the dial come alive and take over the bezel.
This year in total, Boucheron will be offering, housed in an 18 ct grey gold case with a 42 mm diameter, a collection of 6 models inspired by three animal themes dear to the House’s heart. Among them, the chameleon, gripped by an irrepressible yearning to gobble up an elusive bug; the slightly haywire frog, with one of its globular eye spinning endlessly in its socket; and an owl, whose convergent squint turns into a divergent squint every minute, with a most comical effect.

Owl Ronde “Seconde Folle”

The night is falling now: out comes an owl, with a muted flutter. Well, not quite… The bird that serves as one of Boucheron’s emblems seems to have just awoken from a deeply repairing sleep. Which is probably why the haggard, wideeyed bird, its wings spread as if to fly away through an oblong sky light surrounded with foliage, has no other purpose than to draw a smile from anyone laying an eye on this watch. It is true that this markedly luxurious timepiece, between the hands of the House of Boucheron’s designers, reveals an incredible potential for humour. Through the night bird’s misty eye, one can feel that artistry can also be fun and “quirky”, without losing any of its aura.
With its aventurine-covered gold dial, this 42 mm diameter white gold piece, its caseband adorned with a pointes de diamant pattern, is an invitation to let yourself be lulled by a starry night. The elliptical opening on the reverse affords a view on the intricate finishing of a mechanical self-winding automatic GP 4000 calibre, like an evocation of the earth’s orbit. On the front, the owl looks very “cool”: it loves jewellery so much that it has covered itself in them, from the tip on its head to the tip of its quills. And what if this owl, all paved with multicoloured sapphires, diamonds, tsavorites and rubies, was in fact an Eagle Owl who had forgotten to wake up when the night fell?